My Perfect Plans – The Perkins Retreat Experience

I love to travel; I just hate the process of traveling; I do NOT like wake up early, OR go through security OR to be always expecting for something to go wrong. BUT today nothing is going to touch my perfect plan for this week. This experience was sold to me as one of the best leadership retreats ever. I have been planning every single detail to make sure I, along with my co-worker Gerald and 12 youth pastors have the most inspiring experience with world-renown author, preacher, and civil rights movement activist Dr. John Perkins.

I woke up at 4am, got to the airport by 5am, the security line was LONG but I still made it to the gate by 6am. Then 10 minutes before boarding the airline announced the flight was delayed by 15 minutes… then by 30, then by 45… and then… we left, at 9am. My final destination was Jackson Mississippi with a layover in Atlanta. Because of the delayed in GR I had lost my connection. ALL flights to Jackson out of Atlanta were full, FULL!

What’s so important in Jackson, MS that the whole world wants to go to it today!

At the end of the day I had to go to Memphis then go to Jackson. What should’ve been a short, sweet flight to a relaxing leadership retreat, ended up being a stressful and painful (had to carry my heavy computer bag) trip.

I finally arrived in Jackson, with all the stress in the world. I was stressed out because my perfect plan had not worked; I was supposed to rent a van, pick up people at the airport, take them to lunch, then take them to the retreat center. I had to give my pastors a nice welcome package, I was supposed to meet Dr. Perkins and in my perfect world I was going to go for a walk with him to share my views of the week. But all that was gone now. By the time I got to the guest house, most people were ready to go to bed.

I was sad, frustrated… but then something hit me. Although things went wrong on my end, everyone didn’t seem to know or care. They were simply blessed with the opportunity to be there, taking a break from a busy church, with the potential of receiving good spiritual, from-the-heart advice from a preacher, Civil Rights hero. The details were not as important as the message God has for them and after seeing such a eye opening picture, I went peacefully to sleep. Tomorrow will be a beautiful, imperfect day.